Photographer's
Note:Fate Texas Today -This
looks to have been a very small town that is being totally swallowed by new housing
development. Would not be surprised to learn that 90 plus percent of the town
is less than 5-10 years old. - Mike
Price, September 2009History
in a Pecan
Shell

The name isn’t fate as in destiny and it doesn’t mean predestination (unless
you plan to go there). Early settler Lafayette Brown was popular enough with his
neighbors that they suggested his shortened name “Fate” be used for the community.

By 1880 the town was granted a post office and within a few years it had a population
of 75 supported by two stores, two cotton gins and a school.

In 1886,
word had leaked that the railroad (the Missouri, Kansas and Texas) was building
through and Dr. Wylie T. Barnes. Barnes platted a new town on his property, modestly
naming the community Barnes City. Since the land was a mere .5 mile from the old
Fate, residents had no problem moving that short distance. But if Dr. Barnes had
grandiose dreams for his namesake town, they were dashed in 1887 when locals balked
at having to fill out another post office application. Instead, the new post office
acquired the name of the old post office. It was Fate.

Fate spent the last
decade of the 19th century adding people and businesses. Growth was slow but steady
and by the 1920 census, the town was a single person short of 300 residents.

Shortly after WWI the highway through
Fate was built, but it worsened the situation rather than improve it. People were
able to easily leave Fate for the services and goods that their tiny community
couldn’t supply.

As the Great Depression arrived, Fate’s population dropped
by 1/3 to 194 . Just prior to WWII
it was already down to 127. As the war effort increased job opportunities in Dallas
and Fort Worth, Fate lost population
but after the war it started to rise, eventually reaching nearly 500 for the 1990
census. The 2000 census reported 497 people in Fate.

Fate Presbyterian
Church Historical Marker Text

When
Presbyterians organized this congregation in the middle 1880s, the community of
Fate was developing as a new settlement on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad.
Among the eighteen individuals who chartered the church were members of the Leonard,
Kale, McLendon, Cooper, Wilson, Bonsel, Morgan, Holiday, and Sawyer families.
In the early years, a circuit rider served as minister of this and other area
churches. One early circuit rider was the Rev. J. A. Hornbeak (d. 1939), who was
serving as minister of the Fate Presbyterian Church in 1894 when the members constructed
the first sanctuary. Located on Brown Street, it was built under the supervision
of head carpenter H. A. Kale (1834-1921), a charter member of the congregation.
The church continued to worship in the structure until the early 1920s. In 1926,
a new church building was completed at this site. With historic ties to the earliest
days of the Fate community, the Fate Presbyterian Church remains an important
institution in Rockwall County. Church members have included many community leaders
and pioneer area settlers.